Matt Groening

The Simpsons New Couch Gag Parodies Adventure Time

Cartoon Network’s Emmy award winning Adventure Time has been parodied by The Simpsons in one of their Couch Gag intros for an upcoming episode. Each episode of The Simpsons has a slightly different joke at the end of the opening credits of each episode in The Simpsons’ living room, or in later seasons, the whole intro has been reworked with a different theme.

In the intro, we see Springfield re-imagined as the Land Of Ooo (flying across the land just like Adventure Time’s intro), we see main characters – Bart and Homer as Finn (Bart the Boy) and Jake (Dog named Homer), Mr. Burns as the Ice King repairing the cracks on the cooling towers and Maggie as Princess Bubblegum. Created by Matt Groening and made by Gracie Films, 20th Century Fox and Film Roman, The Simpsons is the longest-running scripted series and longest-running animated series in television history, now in its 28th season. The show has won a total of 31 Emmy Awards and has aired on several channels across the world, including at one point, Cartoon Network in the Philippines.

Springfield and the Land of Ooo are both afflicted by radiation, a common theme in both shows. During the intro, multiple references to previous episodes of The Simpsons are referenced, instead of Finn and Jake travelling past some mountains, we see Bart and Homer walking past piles of discarded objects, including the Monorail, Funzo and Homer’s concept car “The Homer”.

This isn’t the first time Adventure Time has been referenced in a Matt Groening creation, both Finn and Jake made a cameo appearance in an episode of Futurama called “Leela and the Genestalk”, John DiMaggio is both the voice of Futurama’s Bender and Adventure Time’s Jake.

The Simpsons episode with the Adventure Time intro is called “Monty Burns’ Fleeing Circus” (a reference to Monty Python’s Flying Circus), the episode will air on FOX in the United States this Sunday (25/09/2016) at 8pm ET.

In a slightly related note, Comedy Central’s South Park made a reference to Cartoon Network in its season 20 premiere called “Member Berries” last week, listing “Lil’ Supercraig” as a potential animated series as part of Cartman’s Coon and Friends superhero franchise, this is probably a joke relating to Teen Titans Go! or other DC Comics animated shows that usually airs on the channel.